IX! IX! IX! Are Girls Getting a Fair Shot at Sports in D.C. Schools?

It’s these kinds of unequal conditions—and a vast disparity in opportunities for male and female athletes in D.C. Public Schools—that spurred the interest of the National Women’s Legal Center, which alleged in a June Title IX administrative complaint that DCPS has failed to provide female athletes opportunities for participation and resources equal to those provided to boys. After DCPS declined to work with the legal center privately, it filed an administrative complaint with the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights, which is also investigating a separate May 2012 complaint against DCPS regarding unfair treatment of female athletes.

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n 2010, Roosevelt High School eliminated its girls basketball program because of coach turnover. The school dropped its soccer team in 2003 for the same reasons. According to the NWLC complaint, in 2010-11, the school was tied with Ballou High School for the highest participation gap between the percentage of students enrolled who are female and the percentage of athletic opportunities at the school allotted for girls. Their participation gap for female students was 26 percent, meaning that for a student body that was 45 percent female and 55 percent male, 81 percent of the school’s athletic opportunities were for boys. (The DCPS average gap is 12 percent.)

NWLC’s interest in the District doesn’t end with traditional public schools. The group also has concerns about District charter schools, says Neena Chaudhry, senior counsel and director of equal opportunities in athletics for NWLC. Theola Labbé-DeBose, director of communications for the D.C. Public Charter School Board, says it doesn’t collect Title IX data; rather, she says, it’s the responsibility of individual schools to do so.